Engineered Biology Based on the Bible

First post of the year, and my unregistered assault keyboard is locked, loaded, and upgraded.

When doing science, it is important to make sure that one is operating within the framework. This includes presuppositions. As stated before, everyone has a worldview, and that includes things we presuppose to be true without empirical verification. Secular scientists presuppose universal common descent with modifications evolution, biblical creation scientists presuppose that the Bible is true. There are times when those assumptions need to be checked.

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We have seen numerous times that a naturalistic worldview doesn't marry up with observed evidence, so timelines are modified, data is tweaked, and a prairie schooner-full of problems beset secularists. Instead of playing around protecting the naturalism narrative, secular scientists with integrity should be questioning their presuppositions. In fact, that's part of the reason that some have saddled up to ride for the creation brand and left evolutionism laying on the dusty trail.

What should creationists check? They agree that the Bible is true. Models and interpretations of data come and go, theories are modified or abandoned because of both theology and science, see if scientific interpretations square with the Bible, and all that good stuff. Seems like they have their hats on aright.

Rein in there a moment. Checking to see that interpretations don't conflict with the Bible is important, but what about flipping it around? Seems like a good idea for biblical creationists to start with the Bible for building models and theories. Let's come back to that in a bit.

We have seen that the folks at the Institute for Creation Research have been working on Continuous Environmental Tracking and engineered adaptability in organisms. This is based on how living things are designed. They are working on engineered biology.

If you study on it a spell, any rational person can tell if something has been designed. When angry atheists say that things only appear designed, well, that's just downright stupid. Such an assertion is an unscientific opinion; it is metaphysics and cannot be tested. An argument from intelligent design states that a building has a builder, a painting has a painter, etc., so it should be obvious that living things, which have far more specified complexity, have a Master Designer. That Designer is God, who has not only made himself known through creation, but in his written Word as well.

Starting from the Bible, we see clues about design. (After all, Matthew Fontaine Maury was paying attention to God's Word and ended up providing an invaluable service. Others have had similar insights.) If we ask the right questions, we see that the Bible tells us about living things: they are God's handiwork, or workmanship. Things did not just happen or were not simply thrown together. We should expect creation to display its design as the primary attribute of creation.

Engineered biology would look at this workmanship and see the design — the engineering principles. These are done for a purpose. As regular readers have seen, evolution has harmed medical science because materialists presuppose evolution, but those "vestigial organs/structures", that "junk DNA" and so forth were designed to be where they are.

Not only presupposing design but also seeking it out as an engineering principle is a procedure that ICR is developing. Is this framework for creation science biology worthwhile? This child thinks it looks promising. We can pray that God leads them, and if it turns out to be the wrong trail, that they'll gracefully abandon it and seek something else. Also, if this develops, we can hope that other biblical creation science ministries support it.

Does the Bible give indications about how creatures operate that could guide ICR’s first steps down the best path for developing a theory of biological design? If so, then we would have good reasons to anticipate a theory with the potential to fundamentally change how people interpret biological phenomena by viewing creatures in a radically new way.

Echoing the sage counsel of Dr. Humphreys, we ask ourselves some basic questions. Is there even any biblical justification for a theory of biological design? Are there clues in the Bible that could help us develop this theory, ask novel questions, frame hypotheses, and guide research? Let’s start this journey.

To read the rest of the article, see "Finding Biblical Clues to Design."